McMenamins, Deschutes Historical Museum, and Oregon Historical Society present…
“Timberline Lodge: A New Deal Masterpiece”
Presented by Sarah Baker Munro, historian of Timberline Lodge and director of the Hoover-Minthorn House Museum
Old St. Francis History Pub

Timberline became the showplace for Oregon’s Works Progress Administration art and craft. Oregon’s WPA administrator, Emerson J. Griffith, was a skier and was enamored with the idea of building a ski lodge on the slopes of Mt. Hood. He was not the first to have that idea, but once he was appointed administrator, he was in a position to finance the lodge construction through public funding.

Griffith was under terrific time pressure to have the lodge designed and construction underway before the money was channeled elsewhere. One of the most remarkable facts about the lodge design and construction was the speed with which it was completed. The team of architects was not always in agreement with each other, but that tension worked to create a warm and welcoming rustic building.

Griffith did not stop with the building, but involved almost every program of the WPA in Oregon in furnishing and decorating the lodge, and in entertainment at the dedication of the lodge. Many of Oregon’s greatest WPA artists were employed on the Timberline project. Workshops to create furnishings were a model that, it was hoped, would continue beyond the lodge project to create a cottage industry for craftsmen.

Architecture, construction, furnishing and dedication will be described in this talk, a tribute to Oregon’s WPA masterpiece. Recent developments at the lodge, new ski opportunities, and Friends of Timberline projects will be mentioned at the end.

About the Speaker
Sarah Baker Munro graduated from Pitzer College, Claremont, CA, in art history and anthropology. She received a Master of Arts in Folklore from the University of California, Berkeley. She has been active with Friends of Timberline since 1975, and has served as president of the board. In 1978, she co-authored a catalog on Timberline Lodge and she wrote Timberline Lodge: The History, Art and Craft of an American Icon, published by Timber Press in 2009. She was voted historian of Timberline Lodge by the Friends of Timberline. Currently, she serves as Director of the Hoover-Minthorn House Museum, boyhood home of Herbert Hoover, 31st President of the United States, in Newberg, OR.